There are several lines of policy that might be, ought to be,
and for the safety of free government must be, undertaken without further delay.
Some of them ought to have been undertaken long ago, and further neglect will
be unpardonable cowardice.
A rigid and comprehensive immigration law ought
to be enacted, with a three-fold object: first, to exclude absolutely all persons
who are known as believers in anarchistic principles or members of anarchistic
societies; second, to exclude all below a certain educational standard of fitness
for citizenship in the United States; third, to exclude all below a certain
standard of economic fitness to enter our industrial field as competitors with
American labor.
The first provision would not, of course, be infallible,
but it would serve at least as a sieve and intercept the majority of the worst
type of anarchists seeking asylum in this country. To enforce this would require
a more extensive secret service in connection with our consular [302][303]
posts in foreign countries, and a more rigid system of examination at our immigration
ports. It ought not to be nearly so difficult to do this as to thwart spies
in disguise, coming from an enemy in time of war. The anarchist’s hand is against
all government, and he should be classed as a public enemy and excluded for
the same kind of reasons that the spy is watched for and captured. Much can
be done in this direction, and must be; it is futile to pass repressive measures
against anarchists already here, while doing nothing to stop the constant incoming
of fresh recruits.
The second object of a rigid immigration law should
be to secure, by a careful and not merely perfunctory educational test, at least
some intelligent capacity to appreciate American institutions and act sanely
as American citizens. It is very true that this alone probably would not keep
out a single anarchist; they are usually men of considerable intelligence and
sometimes high education; but it would do what is almost equally important,—tend
to reduce the background of ignorance in which envy, passion, suspicion and
hatred of authority are born, and out of which anarchistic sentiment most naturally
springs.
The third point of an immigration law should be
an adequate economic test,—proper proof of personal capacity to earn an American
living, and the possession of a stated sum of money, enough to insure a decent
start under American conditions. This would serve a purpose somewhat like the
educational test, in insuring a higher general standard of immigration, but
it would also give two other results even more important: first, it would practically
stop the influx of cheap labor competition, which gives rise to so much of bitterness
in American industrial life; second, it would help dry up the springs of the
pestilential social conditions in our great cities, where anarchistic organizations
flourish, [303][304] and to which the anarchist
haranguers and agents constantly point as proofs of the tyranny of government.
Both the educational and economic tests in a new immigration law should be designed
to protect and elevate the general social background, and thus aid in destroying
anarchism by inexorably closing in on its field of opportunity.